Backup internet connection?

[ChrisHGTV]

Grandmothers and eggs again...

Are your neighbours getting the same speeds and reliability as you? If you're all in the same (slow) boat, that's one story - that's down to BT

If it's only you that's got slower speed than expected, that's down to your router, your config, settings and devices.

Worth investigating. Try to compare speeds at roughly the same time. As you know performance varies between, say, mid-morning and early evening.

And you know that you should use 5ghz protocol on your iPhone and iPad for fastest speed, and 2.4ghz only if you're trying to cope with obstructions in the house?

And you have a clean line coming into your router? No silly redundant connections to sockets that you don't use any more?

Presumably you don't have signal repeaters on your network?

I think I need some egg sucking advise for sure, I’m getting more confused with this now!

I think there are two issues, for sure there is a bt fault somewhere as it drops out completely and to last Tuesday its all worked fine.

But as I’ve tried to investigate I’ve also tried to improve the setup - but now I’m confused!

Basically the internet cable comes into the house through a BT Master socket 5c and plugs straight into a smart hub 2. There is also a TV attached to the hub via a bt tv box thing. I then have one Wi-Fi disc on the landing that feeds Wi-Fi upstairs. So far so good.

Then I have a tp-link powerline attached to the hub and that feeds another powerline in another room at the back of the house that the TV, another bt tv box thing and an audio pro speaker plugs into.

I then have another powerline in the stable at the end of the garden that has an Ethernet connection to another bt disc that gives me Wi-Fi for the shed/gym near the stable. I have power in both the stable and gym but the consumer unit is in the stable so that’s where I’ve put the powerline. I only seem to get 20Mb/s but it’s enough for Zwift and streaming movies when im on the rower.

Where I’m really confused is that I seem to have two networks that I can connect to and they seem to have different speeds. But the power lines must be on one only as to get internet in the shed I have to connect to a particular one.

The other thing is I can’t see which is 5Ghz or 2.4 as when I connect it just has the network name, no mention of the Ghz. The powerlines have both but again I can’t see how to select one or t’other!

I think my iphone and iPad automatically connect to whichever has the strongest signal? I can’t see how to change it.

Im sure there must be a simpler setup! Maybe I need to get someone round to take a look.

 

[m80]

Grandmothers and eggs again...

Are your neighbours getting the same speeds and reliability as you? If you're all in the same (slow) boat, that's one story - that's down to BT

If it's only you that's got slower speed than expected, that's down to your router, your config, settings and devices.

Worth investigating. Try to compare speeds at roughly the same time. As you know performance varies between, say, mid-morning and early evening.

And you know that you should use 5ghz protocol on your iPhone and iPad for fastest speed, and 2.4ghz only if you're trying to cope with obstructions in the house?

And you have a clean line coming into your router? No silly redundant connections to sockets that you don't use any more?

Presumably you don't have signal repeaters on your network?

Fwiw,
after years of trying all sorts I became complacent. Nothing would improve our unreliable supply.

The town is fed by fibre, oh great methought when they changed over, no difference.

I've had the Devolo repeaters. With that you create a new network. So we (well I, as everybody expects ya to do this stuff) would try the incoming supply network (it has changed a few times), and compare to the Devolo network (that picks up from the supply network so can't be faster than that, but may have overcome the walls and ceilings possible issue). No real difference.

I know they can attenuate at the street box, so as to boost longer runs, mmm, how would I know if ours is restricted by that?
But when it rains we suffer more.
Recently the neighbours have been discussing this Fibre Heroes planned erection of poles, with overhead lines to each end user. property. Well we have been discussing how to stop 'em doing this retro return to the 50's. We have a Open Reach engineer neighbour, and it transpires that our estate is cabling buried in mud, no ducts anywhere. A 'ping' moment as I could see that our cable might easily be damaged under there somewhere.

An overhead supply would give us wow speeds I reckon, but look bloody 'orrible. Anyway we have v low demands, so no need for wow. Our issue is our little girlie needs good and reliable to work from home if she visits. We want her to visit for a week, to dog sit, while we go skiing. So this thread is right interesting.

On reading I'm aiming to pick up one of these

Pardon our interruption...

I can test that with the Giffgaff sim from my phone. A 4g signal would serve us well enough, in theory.
If that's a success I'll get a payg sim from Talkmobile and pay for their service monthly, the final package dependant on how much we actually use, as I 'aint a clue right now.

Unless those that know better than I can say why it's a dumb idea.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

I think I need some egg sucking advise for sure, I’m getting more confused with this now!

I think there are two issues, for sure there is a bt fault somewhere as it drops out completely and to last Tuesday its all worked fine.

But as I’ve tried to investigate I’ve also tried to improve the setup - but now I’m confused!

Basically the internet cable comes into the house through a BT Master socket 5c and plugs straight into a smart hub 2. There is also a TV attached to the hub via a bt tv box thing. I then have one Wi-Fi disc on the landing that feeds Wi-Fi upstairs. So far so good.

Then I have a tp-link powerline attached to the hub and that feeds another powerline in another room at the back of the house that the TV, another bt tv box thing and an audio pro speaker plugs into.

I then have another powerline in the stable at the end of the garden that has an Ethernet connection to another bt disc that gives me Wi-Fi for the shed/gym near the stable. I have power in both the stable and gym but the consumer unit is in the stable so that’s where I’ve put the powerline. I only seem to get 20Mb/s but it’s enough for Zwift and streaming movies when im on the rower.

Where I’m really confused is that I seem to have two networks that I can connect to and they seem to have different speeds. But the power lines must be on one only as to get internet in the shed I have to connect to a particular one.

The other thing is I can’t see which is 5Ghz or 2.4 as when I connect it just has the network name, no mention of the Ghz. The powerlines have both but again I can’t see how to select one or t’other!

I think my iphone and iPad automatically connect to whichever has the strongest signal? I can’t see how to change it.

Im sure there must be a simpler setup! Maybe I need to get someone round to take a look.

Nice complex set-up !
I’m out and about at the moment so will reply properly a bit later.

Quick question to clarify: is it just you that’s had the problem recently, or have your neighbours on BT also had a similar problem out of nowhere?

Just trying to get to “is it just your house or is it an issue in the BT box down the road?”

 

[ChrisHGTV]

Nice complex set-up !
I’m out and about at the moment so will reply properly a bit later.

Quick question to clarify: is it just you that’s had the problem recently, or have your neighbours on BT also had a similar problem out of nowhere?

Just trying to get to “is it just your house or is it an issue in the BT box down the road?”

Thanks for any advice! I’m not sure if it’s just us at the moment. BT did think it was a fault on the network and not in the house. The engineer is coming tomorrow so hopefully we’ll know more then! I’ll report back! Cheers

 

[Doodle]

Where I’m really confused is that I seem to have two networks that I can connect to and they seem to have different speeds. But the power lines must be on one only as to get internet in the shed I have to connect to a particular one.

The other thing is I can’t see which is 5Ghz or 2.4 as when I connect it just has the network name, no mention of the Ghz. The powerlines have both but again I can’t see how to select one or t’other!

I think my iphone and iPad automatically connect to whichever has the strongest signal? I can’t see how to change it.

Im sure there must be a simpler setup! Maybe I need to get someone round to take a look.

On consumer level equipment you'll probably have to name them differently so that you can manually direct your equipment to whichever you want. The iPhone and iPad will choose the strongest available signal to a certain extent, but the handover between your points of access will be clunky at best. There will be a simpler setup but in many cases it will require more effort in the initial stage to get it working. Ultimately powerline adapters are a massive cludge, but for your average user they get the job done.

At home I have 4 separate wireless access points, all backhauled on ethernet cable. There's one in the living room, one in each of our upstairs offices and an outdoor one on the back of the house covering the garden. The outdoor one will give me over 100Mb at 80ft from the AP (i.e. in the wife's potting shed). With a central controller for the APs that manages rules for what networks clients can connect to depending on purpose and VLAN, and a standalone router with 2 incoming connections (one gigabit cable, one 4G) it makes for seamless transition between the access points and a fast failover; it takes about 15-20 seconds for traffic to move to 4G after the cable connection dies. But to achieve that has taken a fair amount of prep running cables and a similar commitment in hardware investment, albeit worthwhile as both myself and my wife work from home.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

OK, Sunday lunch over, people gone. You may have had an issue with your BT service "from the cabinet" and only BT can diagnose and resolve that.

Let's use simple terms.

Let's look at optimising what you've got at home. You have two services (SSID), a 2.4ghz (802.11 protocol) , which is slower but reaches greater distance, and a 5ghz (802.11n protocol) service which has shorter range but kind of twice the speed. Some people name these SSID's "name and 2.4ghz" others just give them slightly different names. ("mbclub" and "mbclubfast"). Your phone / tablet/laptop will choose the one it fancies, but won't necessarily connect to the fastest service. You can look up the speed of each logon from your phone / tablet etc just by googling "how do I look up speed on my device." (I could try to explain here but I won't do as good a job as Mr Google.) Passwords are the same for both.

You can judge which connections you need faster speed from (like video) and which you'll just be happy to get basic service.

Basic 'hygiene" Your router needs to be in a central position and close to where you "have the need for speed." In my case this is the floor below my study, but which is more central for the house. My kids can sit by it with their multiscreen video, real time trading and market information screen set ups and command the universe, while others further away can check the latest on Catherine and Meghan. Be wary of an RSJ which might block signal. The router shouldn't be on the floor or hidden behind electronic kit, ideally it should simply be visible on a table or cabinet and preferably not by the window but closer to internal walls.

Repeaters (your TP-link) get elderly. It's worth looking up its rough age, speed and power and then consider an update. You may find a newer strong device removes the need for multiple signals. There are fancier new things ("Net?" can't remember) which might help. Again physical location can help.

Hope this sheds light.

Labour the issue with BT. They can literally turn up the speed of your connection from the cabinet, if you can be bothered to challenge them. Service delivered is tuned according to the quality of their local cables. It's worth being a pain and saying "More, Sir ?"

(To any techies: I've kept this simple. Do chime in if you feel I've missed something)

 

[flying haggis]

Try Unplugging the Phone Connection, then Reconnect, that's when ours went down! I need to find some BT Adaptors to Plug my Phone into the BT Hub!

your BT hub will have a phone socket on the back so no adapter needed. I assume you are thinking of something along the line of BT plug to rj45 which isn't needed.

 

[190]

(To any techies: I've kept this simple. Do chime in if you feel I've missed something)

If BT are involved because there is any copper in the connection i.e. it's a fibre to the cabinet, then the only thing thing they can tweak is the DLM (Dynamic Line Management) which is the algorithm that determines the negotiated speed between the cabinet and the router. Basically they can only reset the DLM to have it re learn the optimum speed or trade reliability for speed by reducing the noise margins.

This is a good explanation of how DLM works and incidentally regardless of what ISP's will tell you, it counters the myth that turning a router off over night reduces connection speed because the algorithm is specifically designed to ignore such infrequent loss of connection.

::. Kitz - DLM .::

 

[Neiltodd]

Hello all, wonder if any IT gurus can help!

Our broadband is with BT and we currently have a fault, reported since last Tuesday. At first they said it was on the Network, but now we have an engineer coming to the house. Slowish speed (65 Mb/s, normally about 120) but also intermittent loss. We’ve not long renewed with BT but dropped the Halo option which guarantees connection through a dongle they send you. Sod’s Law!

My question is, is there a way of having some kind of pay as you go backup for when this happens? I can get access patching through my work phone for critical stuff like email and Teams etc but my wife doesn’t have a work phone.

Just for info the BT reporting service has been good with the operators I’ve spoken to at the Newcastle centre perfectly ok, however the actual delivery of the fault repair has been pants! It was supposed to have been fixed by Friday after booking the repair Tuesday but no evidence of anything being done yet, so have had to contact them twice more.

I would be delighted with 65Mbs/sec, the fastest BT Halo can offer here is 30 and we don't usually get much over 20

 

[NJSS]

Interestingly some years ago, with the same connection & router I moved from BT to Andrews & Arnold ("AAISP") , and found that reliability increased vastly, and with some attention from A&A speed and lag were both improved.

A&A - Home

www.aa.net.uk

If you are contemplating a new ISP then I would start here:-

The Top 10 Broadband ISPs - ISPreview UK

The best ten broadband Internet service providers in the United Kingdom as voted by readers of ISPreview

www.ispreview.co.uk

and go for one of the top half dozen:-

 

[davymead]

Been using this little gem for years, and couldn’t be happier. Never had any kind of connectivity problem anywhere.

 

[ChrisHGTV]

OK, Sunday lunch over, people gone. You may have had an issue with your BT service "from the cabinet" and only BT can diagnose and resolve that.

Let's use simple terms.

Let's look at optimising what you've got at home. You have two services (SSID), a 2.4ghz (802.11 protocol) , which is slower but reaches greater distance, and a 5ghz (802.11n protocol) service which has shorter range but kind of twice the speed. Some people name these SSID's "name and 2.4ghz" others just give them slightly different names. ("mbclub" and "mbclubfast"). Your phone / tablet/laptop will choose the one it fancies, but won't necessarily connect to the fastest service. You can look up the speed of each logon from your phone / tablet etc just by googling "how do I look up speed on my device." (I could try to explain here but I won't do as good a job as Mr Google.) Passwords are the same for both.

You can judge which connections you need faster speed from (like video) and which you'll just be happy to get basic service.

Basic 'hygiene" Your router needs to be in a central position and close to where you "have the need for speed." In my case this is the floor below my study, but which is more central for the house. My kids can sit by it with their multiscreen video, real time trading and market information screen set ups and command the universe, while others further away can check the latest on Catherine and Meghan. Be wary of an RSJ which might block signal. The router shouldn't be on the floor or hidden behind electronic kit, ideally it should simply be visible on a table or cabinet and preferably not by the window but closer to internal walls.

Repeaters (your TP-link) get elderly. It's worth looking up its rough age, speed and power and then consider an update. You may find a newer strong device removes the need for multiple signals. There are fancier new things ("Net?" can't remember) which might help. Again physical location can help.

Hope this sheds light.

Labour the issue with BT. They can literally turn up the speed of your connection from the cabinet, if you can be bothered to challenge them. Service delivered is tuned according to the quality of their local cables. It's worth being a pain and saying "More, Sir ?"

(To any techies: I've kept this simple. Do chime in if you feel I've missed something)

Thanks Mike that's super helpful! Its been on and off today but when on i'm getting 150Mb/s.

But "Newsflash" - we now know what the problem is, just collared our neighbour. There are 9 homes on our estate linked to the GFast cabinet (about 100m from our house) which is where the fault is! And apparently there is only one OpenReach engineer in the region who can fix it so we're waiting for him to be available. I remember now when we first had the 100Mb/s service they had to do something with this Gfast and we had new cables run to the house.

So that sheds some light on that issue at least - then i'll take a look at the internal setup!

 

[Riva811]

5G external modem